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Art is so pointless sometimes. Don’t you think with all the thinking that artists have done over the years that we would have figured out the meaning of life by now?

You know what I think about the meaning of life?

What?

Why would God create us if we are going to die? But not really even that. Why would God create us with the capacity of knowing we’re going to die? Why couldn’t he just have made us live forever? Or at least make us unaware of what death is? That’d save me a lot of trouble. I’d be happy. But you know what? Have you ever seen anything amazing come from an ignorant creature? I don’t think so. Ignorance isn’t bliss, because without knowing what dark is you can’t know what light is. Without down there’s no up. It’s like explaining color to a blind person. Live forever? That’s not the way to go. It’s in the struggle, the fight of knowing that we are going to die, and having the choice to give it our all and fight, and fight, and scrape and crawl and bleed; fight until there is nothing left in us, until we are everything we wanted to be, or become everything we hate, until we see the light and release our last breath saying, “That was all of me. That was everything. That was my magnum opus.” It is that fight that brings out the worst in us, the absolute worst of desperation, greed, malice, jealousy, and wrath. And it is that same fight that we can triumph, love, heal, conquer and live. LIVE. Really live… and that’s what makes it worth it. That’s what makes life worth living. That’s why we are alive. That’s why we were created. But do no mistake the possibility of life with real life. Do not mistake defeat for death, and hope for triumph. It is a fight. Nothing is guaranteed. Many will fail, and many will succeed, but one thing for certain is that all of us will die. You don’t need me to tell you this. It’s not a surprise. You know it’s coming, and so we are left, not even with the choices we make, but just one choice: Will you fight? Will you fight? Will you live?

But why don’t artists just say that? Why does it take them their whole life to figure that out, or maybe even never figure that out?

That IS the art. Art cannot be summarized or broken down or paraphrased without its meaning being summarized, broken down, and paraphrased as well. Art can’t be explained; it has to be experienced. How do you hear music for someone else? You can’t. How do you taste a delicious treat for someone else? You can’t. How are you supposed to live for someone else? You can’t. I could tell you the meaning of life, but it wouldn’t be the meaning of your life. It takes a lifetime of experiences to understand the meaning of life. Not just the meaning of any life; the meaning of your life. Life is the art, and art is life. We cannot live for someone else, but we struggle to, we try to pour our soul into art so that someone might feel a glimpse of the same thing we felt, live a fraction of our lives, and thus keep us alive through art. We don’t need to live. We don’t need to think. We don’t need to do anything; so I ask you this: why do we? …Your life is art, and you are the meaning of life.

A man and his wife started driving off the highway because she wanted to see if they could go somewhere where there was no sound. They drive through a dusty plain until they can’t see the road, and then they get out of the car. No rush of cars, horns, alarms, bells. Nothing surrounds them except a single tree in the distance.

The car’s warm engine crackles and pops softly. She raises an eyebrow at him. He responds with a sigh and he leads her towards the distant tree. It’s hot, and it’s a long walk. He fans the both of them with a used road map. A little over half way the wife sees the tree clearly. A dryness has spread through its branches like a cancer. The husband turns to look back, seeing that his wife had stopped walking. For the briefest of moments they were alone.

“Here’s good.” She lies down on the ground, and he joins her. She rests her head on his chest, closing her eyes, imagining nothing, listening to the only sound in the world; his heartbeat. It was bigger than anything in that moment, it was the only thing she felt, and when she closed her eyes it was all she knew. If she so much as lifted her head, opened her eyes, it would be gone forever. Of course his heart would keep beating, but it wouldn’t be the same. It would never be the same.

Unaware she had been holding her breath, she finally relaxed, and let it go.

After a devastating earthquake in a destitute third world country, many first world organizations sent ‘short-term missionary teams’ to help the devastated population return to their lives.

There was rubble and wreckage and people collecting their broken lives in a wheelbarrow and hauling them away by the side of the road. Without homes, the people were openly on display as cars drove by, however no one seemed to notice in the same way you don’t notice every breath you take.

The short term missionaries then rolled through with their shiny rented cars and took pictures like it was a zoo. Normally in these circumstances those inside the car would be afraid, but the glass windows of the car served as a barrier that detached and removed these short-term missionaries from the world; but from the outside it was clear that those in the air conditioned cars were the ones on display.

Last Friday, in one sitting, I drove from Orange County, California to Seattle, Washington, my old stomping grounds. I left at 6:00 am Friday and arrived at 2:00 am Saturday. This is a list of some of the things I saw:

-Pavement. Lots of pavement.

-The Horizon.

-The sunrise gradually warm the hazy skies over Los Angeles.

-A sprinkler spraying water over a dry field, but the water turned to mist in the heat and drifted away before it could hit the soil. When I drove past, it looked as though the sprinkler was tired of being a sprinkler, and wanted instead to be a rainbow machine.

-Miles of cows on a cattle farm. Typically I don’t measure livestock in units of distance, but here it was appropriate. I’m not sure what the proper unit to measure stench is, but let’s just say it was not mild.

-A cow carcass on the side of the road.

-A tractor with eight foot tall wheels and a footprint wider than the lane it was ‘in,’ rolling through town like it was a compact car.

-The jet stream overhead as it pulled a ribbon of wispy clouds across the sky.

-Signs everywhere telling politicians to “STOP THE DUST BOWL.”

-Christian themed rap was on the radio… and it was good. I was shocked.

-A line of southbound cars backed up so long that while driving 75 mph I was able to listen to “Kashmir” by Led Zepplin in its entirety before the line thinned out. I wanted to roll down my window and shout to those blissfully unaware of the traffipocalypse, “Turn back now! You can still be saved!”

-A motorcycle made by John Deer parked on the sidewalk at a truck stop. It looked old, and was probably rare, but all I could think of was the CEO of John Deer thinking, “How can we cut grass faster?”

-A young man poppin’ bottles by the dumpster in broad day light — literally. His job was to forcefully dispose of empty wine bottles from the night before.

-A bumber sticker for “KONY 2012”

-A sign for “BRAKE TEST AREA” before a long steep downhill… isn’t the whole hill a brake test anyways? I already did the hard part of getting over the hill–why do you have to take a practice test when you only need to pass the final exam?

-Entire orchards and fields dried up and abandoned with only dust devils patrolling the rows of gnarled trees.

-The sunset.

-Half of a deer. It came and went so fast in my headlights that avoiding it was simply a matter of reflex, yet the sight, although brief, is something I can’t unsee.

-Two guys on the radio talking about their new book, “Treat Me Like a Customer,” which is about managing relationships with the same devotion you would give to your work. I took notes. Better to learn now than as an afterthought.

-Tumbleweeds that have long since stopped tumbling.

-Several nameless roads waiting for a name. “Road 22.” “Road 8.” “Road 12.” I think they’re just placeholders waiting for someone to do something amazing so they can rename the roads, but right now they’re still waiting.

I don’t know much about reincarnation, but from what I’ve gathered, it seems like the soul is like a tumbleweed. It grows throughout it’s life, and then when it is time it actualizes, or maybe just then, it first realizes its purpose as it leaves its roots behind and wanders until it finds somewhere to rest. And it starts all over again.

A boy had a cold and needed to blow his nose. There was no tissue in the classroom so he ran to the bathroom and blew his nose into a paper towel square; more paper than towel. Upon removing the half utilized paper from his face to inhale, he paused and examine the paper towel. The way he had blasted the low quality paper towel left a symmetrical blotted pattern of wet and dry resembling a Rorschach ink blot. He was oddly fascinated by it, albeit a disgusting happenstance. Forgetting to sneeze, he looked at it a while longer, trying to discern what the shape reminded him of.

A fellow student walked in. He holds the sneeze blot out at the student. “What does this look like to you?”

“Oh Jesus!” The student was grossed out and completely caught off guard.

“Hmm,” The sneezer examined the paper towel again. “Okay, yeah — I can kinda see it now.”